Helping a leading home insurer to address significant quality assurance shortfalls and develop a brand new QA regime with the customer at the centre.
Challenge
As a result of FSA/FCA enforcement action, the client commissioned our Principal Consultant and team to conduct a ‘root and branch’ evaluation of existing quality assurance arrangements and to then develop and deploy a completely new approach.
Solution
The team’s review identified a series of opportunities for improvement, outlined in a detailed findings and recommendations report which was presented to the Executive Board. Work then began on a new QA regime incorporating a series of policies, processes and procedures. Throughout the process, all key stakeholders were canvassed for input and feedback, thereby ensuring that final sign-off was a mere formality which in turn enabled delivery of the new regime ahead of schedule.
Central to the new QA regime was a fundamental shift to an ‘outcomes focused’ approach. This was underpinned by the design of a new QA scorecard employing enhanced categorisation criteria to assess potential or actual customer detriment.
Another key element was the introduction of a risk-based approach to QA monitoring, factoring in the complexity of the client’s product mix, customer demographics and the skills/experience of the sales person. Its introduction has seen a significant reduction in actual and potential customer detriment.
In collaboration with the client’s internal IT function, the team scoped a new QA scoring dashboard to enable RAG rating of sales interactions. The dashboard now provides a very clear ‘at a glance’ overview as well as a more detailed analysis of areas of strength and required improvement.
The team trained all key stakeholders in adoption of the new QA regime, supporting learning with a series of detailed workshops and clinics. With the formal development interventions complete, members of the team then worked as performance coaches, working with key stakeholder groups to review sales interactions against the new scoring requirements via regular ‘calibration sessions’. Any discrepancies were discussed, debated and agreed, ensuring a uniform approach to the monitoring of sales quality.
Under the new regime, any failure in sales quality means penalties for both the sales person and their line manager. To resolve any disputes therefore, a formal escalation process was also introduced.
The new QA regime formed a key part of a company-wide overhaul of the client’s control framework. To support this, the team designed and implemented a new Training and Competence scheme incorporating the aforementioned escalation process together with the creation of a new arbitration panel.
Outcome
The whole calibration approach has led to a significant improvement in QA monitoring scores across the company.
